佐々木 真一

Development of artificial chromoreceptors for the selective recognition of biologically important species has attracted much attention because of their possible application to chemical sensors such as optodes. As a first example of chemosensor using a chlorophyll derivative as a main dye unit, trifluoroacetyl-chlorins were developed for alcohol/ amine detection. The new chemosensors achieved guest sensing at a longer-wavelength region with less interference from environments and impurities.

In contrast to traditional silicon solar cells, most dye molecules applied in dye-sensitized solar cell lack lightharvesting ability in the near-infrared region. Because natural chlorophylls efficiently use a wide range of light energy, a series of chlorin derivatives applicable to electrodes have been designed and synthesized, and the relations between structural characteristics and the performance for solar cells have been studied.

In the initial stage of photosynthesis, dye molecules represented by chlorophylls are precisely arranged to form light-harvesting antennas, which enable absorption of sunlight, migration of harvested energy, and finally energy transfer to a reaction center. As artificial mimics of such antenna systems, covalently-linked cyclic chlorophyll oligomers as well as synthetic zinc chlorins possessing self-assembling abilities have been synthesized and their structural properties have been investigated.